Trump and Boeing say China agreed to buy 200 aircraft, reopening a key
market for the US planemaker
[May 16, 2026] By
RIO YAMAT
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing will make its first major sale to China in
nearly a decade under an agreement for 200 planes announced Friday after
President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The deal represents a breakthrough in the U.S. aerospace company's
efforts to reenter a market once central to its long-term growth.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from Beijing,
Trump said China also reserved the right to buy as many as 750 Boeing
aircraft as part of the deal. Boeing confirmed the 200-plane order later
Friday but did not specify the types of planes or provide any other
details.
“We had a very successful trip to China and accomplished our major goal
of reopening the China market to orders for Boeing aircraft," the
company said in a statement, adding that looked forward to "continually
addressing China’s aircraft demand.”
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg was among a large group of American CEOs who
joined Trump during the president's trip to Beijing, seeking to sell
products and services to China.
Trump said the potential aircraft deal also would benefit General
Electric, which he said would supply 400 to 450 engines to China. GE
Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp also joined the president on
his trip. The company did not immediately comment on the agreement.
Last month, Ortberg expressed confidence that any broad U.S.-China trade
agreement to emerge when Trump and Xi met would be a “meaningful
opportunity” for Boeing.
“President Trump has been very focused on supporting us in international
campaigns, and he’s been very successful in doing that,” Ortberg told
investors.
Since Trump began serving his second term, his administration has made
Boeing a focus of its plans to revive U.S. manufacturing.
A visit to the Middle East a year ago culminated in major aircraft
agreements, including a Qatar Airways order for up to 210 Boeing jets in
what the planemaker described at the time as its largest-ever widebody
aircraft order. Saudi Arabia also placed commercial jetliner orders
during the trip.
Other major Boeing agreements have followed meetings between Trump and
foreign leaders. In August, Korean Air formalized a roughly $50 billion
deal to buy more than 100 Boeing aircraft, spare engines and long-term
maintenance services during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s visit
to Washington.
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 The following month, a day after
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with Trump in Washington,
Turkish Airlines said it planned to add 225 Boeing aircraft to its
fleet.
In another win for Boeing, the biennial Dubai Air Show opened in
November with hometown airline Emirates ordering 65 of Boeing’s
upcoming 777-9 aircraft. Days later, FlyDubai, the lower-cost sister
carrier of Emirates, announced it had ordered 75 additional Boeing
737 MAX aircraft.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a third of the narrowbody
airliners Boeing delivered went to China. But the company's business
there plummeted as U.S.-China relations soured.
China also was the first country to ground the 737 Max in 2019 after
two of the then-new models crashed less than five months apart in
Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people. Chinese airlines did not
resume Max flights until January 2023, much later than carriers in
many other countries.
Ortberg took over as Boeing's CEO in 2024, a calamitous year for the
company. In January of that year, a panel known as a door plug blew
off a 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. Boeing
faced mounting financial pressure as it came under intensifying
scrutiny over alleged production and quality failures.
While there were some hopes this week's U.S.-China summit would
result in concrete trade deal announcements, the president's trip
ended with a lot of uncertainty about what the two sides agreed on,
said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at
the German Marshall Fund.
Glaser told a media briefing Friday that there had been little
concrete information about trade agreements from the summit,
including on Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as soybeans,
liquefied natural gas and beef.
“All that we have is really what the president has told the world
that China has agreed to,” Glaser said.
___
Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Kelvin Chan in
London contributed to this story.
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